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Saturday, March 22, 2014

I worked on the two pots from last night (two on the right) and am not impressed with my modifications. The collar on the middle pot is way too large and off-center, and by messing with them I lost all the lift in the bottom third of the forms. I haven't decided whether I'm going to keep these pots but I will try to remember these lessons in the future.

The pot on the left is completely stretched to its limit. Once again, I'm not sure how I want the rim to finish, but I will be more careful with it this time.

Friday, March 21, 2014

I am trying to put more volume in my forms and I'm trying to stretch them as far as I can. I made these two pots on Tuesday and really like the form on the left. I want to finish the rim, but I'm not sure how I want to do it yet. We'll see.

Saturday I was at Hal and Corine's helping to stoke the wood kiln. I am always grateful for the privilege of being a part of one of their firings. It's always wonderful to see Hal and Corine, and a great way to spend a day. There's always a fun crew there to help and it has the good feeling of a community barn raising.

What a difference a year makes. Last March it was around 30 degrees and this year it was 70.

Friday was the Empty Bowls event with Second Harvest Food Bank. It was rescheduled from Valentine's Day because of the snowstorm. I was worried about the attendance numbers because of the reschedule and Friday's weather was cold, rainy, and nasty. As you can see from the photos I worried needlessly.

The place was jammed.

Ju-Ian and I were there representing Clayworks. It is always an honor to do so.

The line is at the bottom of the escalator and wrapsall the way around to the left.

The bowls are waiting.

The crowd enters.

People have hard choices to make.

Ju-Ian at the hand-building table.

The day opened up late in the afternoon and there waseven a nice sunset.

I only had a couple of hours in the studio today. I had planned on glazing, but the gas kiln was already loaded when I arrived. I skipped the glazing and made some new pots.

I decided to make some crackled pots and wanted to add something to them as an accent. I thought of painting designs on them but didn't have the time so I used my hands. I really like the design and will experiment further with it.

The one on the left has blue slip and the one on the right has brown slip. They both have white slip hand prints. It's interesting to me how the hand print grows as the surface is stretched.

Out of the seven cups I trimmed on Wednesday, four had "S" cracks in the bottoms so now I have three. It's been a while since I threw cups off the hump and apparently I didn't compress the bottoms well enough. Live and learn and learn again.